Name: Apple Jelly
Ingredients: 4 pounds apples; 1 good stalk rhubarb; 2 pints water

Why it works: Apple and rhubarb work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 162 recipes mention both. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Jelly

Ingredients

4 pounds apples
1 good stalk rhubarb
2 pints water

Directions

Prepare

Wash, quarter, stalk, and core the apples.
Wash the rhubarb and cut it into pieces.

Cook

Place the apples and rhubarb in a preserving pan with 2 pints of water.
Boil gently for 15 minutes, or until the apples are soft.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Apple + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together162 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the bulk of the jam and break down into a soft pulp that thickens the mixture.
Rhubarb: Adds tartness that balances the sweetness of the apples and adds a sharp, fresh flavour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.